Green Fields
by RobinRocks
Summary: FrUK. "You are afraid that you will see," France insisted, leaning forward, his entire bruised body screaming the words, "and you will stop loving them." Set in 1915. For Remembrance Day.
1. 1point2

This is, of course, for 11/11/11 – the marking of Armistice Day all over the world, the 90 year anniversary of the Royal British Legion charity (founded in 1921) and simply the date itself, which was particularly significant today. It's been nice to see everyone wearing their commemorative paper poppies over here in the UK (it's kind of weird that the tradition fell out of use in the USA considering an American woman, Moina Michael, was the one who started it!).

This is also dedicated to **Haw-lin** as part of a trade proposed by her... uh, quite a while back now, haha. She asked me for FrUK and I thought a fic for this date would be the perfect opportunity! Haw-lin, I hope you like it! :3

...Although, on that note, it's not complete. I have been slain by several of my own deadlines recently due to having like no time at all ever anymore (note complete and utter absence of Halloween fic~ D:) and in order to get at least _some_ of this posted today, I really couldn't get it all done. Therefore the second part will be posted on Sunday 13th November (Remembrance Sunday).

Title comes from the poem/song _The Green Fields of France_ by Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle.

Green Fields

The place stank of disinfectant, doused like Holy Water against the devil (the one they called Death). It was cheap stuff, watered down and sent in drums, and was the perfume of all of these hospitals alike – these cancerous necessities which grew on the edges of the frontlines. They smelt of other things, too, blood and puke and piss and burned flesh and god only knew what else, and were rarely silent, the air awash with the groans of wounded and dying men.

You were lucky to die here. It was bad but there was worse. In fields which had once been green, those who fell were not brought water or psalms or even a kind smile as they expired. Out there, you simply prayed for a quick and merciful bullet – or a night so cold that your dying nerves grew numb enough that you could no longer feel the pain.

France was fresh from that hell, never quite as far from it as he would have liked, as he stood in the doorway to the makeshift ward. There were six beds, all occupied by men chosen because there was a chance they would make it, with yet more accommodated on the floor with moth-eaten blankets and ragged pillows. He sank against the doorframe, easing the marrow-deep ache in his battered body as he watched England tend to one of his charges.

After the disaster that had been Gallipoli, England had been pulled from active duty on the frontlines at his own request; not out of fright, naturally, for he was a nation, immortal, and had no fear of death. He had simply been disgusted by the fiasco, by the senseless waste of life, by the thousands wounded, and requested instead (of the sorts of people he could pull strings with) a post which made things better instead of worse. He served now as a Nursing Orderly, in charge of a team of specially-trained nurses in a tiny military hospital just behind the frontlines of The Somme, tending to young men damaged beyond all repair.

Whether he was really that much happier back here than out there, France had no idea.

He still looked like a soldier, clothed in a uniform similar to the dull green he had worn before, but without the leather strap across his chest to mark him as an officer (traded in for an embroidered red cross on a white circle on his right sleeve and a scarlet band on his left). His uniform was clean, though, which made all the difference in the world. France's was filthy, torn badly in places and ragged around each and every hem the way his nerves were, the way his lands were.

He cleared his throat, tired of waiting for England's gaze to fall upon him naturally. Clipboard wedged under his arm, partway through mopping the brow of a feverish Italian soldier with shrapnel wounds, England glanced up briefly to meet his gaze, scowling.

"I know you're there," he said curtly. "I'm sure you can see that I'm busy."

France hid his weariness beneath an exaggerated pout.

"Can you not spare yourself for a short moment?" he drawled. "I came all this way."

"Well, that's why we have visiting hours," England replied crossly. "These are not they, Francis."

France snorted.

"All I ask for is a minute. I have some news for you."

England sighed.

"Fine – I'll be with you in a tick. Just let me make sure that Captain Fellini is comfortable."

France gave a defeated nod and sank into a rickety chair near the door, grateful to be able to sit, to take the weight off his brittle bones. His body ached all over, constant and screaming, bewailing the wounds done to his lands; Belgium was the same (worse, even, so much so that she limped when she walked). Alas, England's neat little hospital could do nothing for either of them – and France simply smiled and shook his head politely, tiredly, when a young nurse in her white apron approached to ask if he was alright, if she couldn't fetch him anything.

Instead he watched England, watched him desperately try to undo the damage of the war by being kind to dying men. He was a surprisingly good nurse, patient and reassuring and gentle, much removed from the savagery on the battlefield he had once been known for (that he had displayed, even, back in 1914).

France was rather perplexed by him, honestly.

Eventually England stopped fawning over the Italian who would be dead in his bed by morning, giving a few quiet commands to two of his nurses before finally approaching France.

"I'm all yours," he said drolly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

France gave a cold smirk.

"I wonder if your reception would be as frosty were I to be carried in here on a stretcher," he said.

"Probably. It is _you_, after all."

"Hmm. Let us commandeer a spare bed, mon cher, and I should be glad to remind you that you do not find me as repulsive as all that."

England simply rolled his eyes.

"Spare bed? You've a fat chance of that, my dear. Now come, what's your news? I have much to do."

"The news?" France allowed himself a wry smile. "On the note of there being no spare beds, I don't think that you are going to take too kindly to it."

England heaved a sigh.

"I see," he muttered. "Another push."

"Oui. It will be an Anglo-French operation."

"It's so senseless," England said, shaking his head. "It's all so senseless. Why can they not _see_ that?"

"With all due respect, Arthur, it is only recently that _you_ have seen that."

"I know." England looked away. "And I suppose it won't make a difference either way. The mad are apt to lead the blind, after all." He rubbed at his arm, his fingertips tracing the edge of the red cross stitched onto his sleeve. "Will... will you be going over?"

France simply nodded. It had been a silly question.

"But you needn't worry," he added. "Not about me. You know we only wear the likeness of humans. We do not know mortality at the hands of their weapons."

"Of course I do. Still..." England coughed. "A-and I'm only saying this as a Nursing Orderly, of course, but... but _do_ be careful all the same."

France smirked.

"Ah, Arthur, take care," he replied. "Your heart is showing."

"Piss off." England checked the watch dangling from one of his top pockets. "I actually mean it. It's getting on a bit and I really have a lot left to do."

"As charming as ever. I cannot say that I think much of your bedside manner, Nurse Kirkland."

"Francis, bugger _off_." England flapped his hands irritably at him as one of patients began to cough; a horrendous wheezing sound, too short of breath with shuddering lungs that no longer worked properly. "Oh—Thompson—"

"Mustard gas?" France asked quietly, listening to the man struggling to breathe; he caught England's wrist.

"Yes. Gassed in the trenches last week. Poor chap isn't going to live much longer but—" England pulled his hand back. "—I'll thank you to give me the opportunity to make him as comfortable as possible."

"Come up tonight," France said in a low voice.

England was derailed.

"Wh-what?"

"The trenches. _My_ trench. Come up tonight."

"W-well, I _can't_, I have to—"

"Just for an hour," France said, his voice growing desperate. "Less, if that is what you want. Just please come. I need a kind word as much as anyone else."

England frowned.

"I'll try," he said. "I can't promise anything, old boy, but I'll try."

He gave Francis a pat on the arm and a nod and then hurried to help the nurse already attending to the gassed soldier – a Scottish boy of just eighteen, David Thompson, who had left his small village in his uniform, smiling about his grand adventure and waving to his proud and tearful mother.

He was dead within the hour and England stamped the pre-written template letter to make it all official. He wrote out the address of Thompson's mother with a steady, practiced hand and added the envelope to the pile.

France didn't stay to watch any of this, of course. He had seen it all before and frankly no longer cared.

* * *

England appeared in the tiny dugout operations room France shared with his senior officers nearing midnight; he was still in uniform, pressed and clinical, and the smell of cheap disinfectant lingering on his skin and hair and clothing lit up the room, mingling with the bitter scent of deep earth. He was clutching a dented metal flask, which he offered out to France before even greeting him.

"Rum?" France teased hopefully. "Gin, perhaps?"

"Neither, I'm afraid," England replied wryly. "It's soup. You look as though you haven't eaten for days."

"Barely," France agreed, taking it. "Though I'm disappointed that you brought something so sensible, Arthur. I was hoping you would bring wine laced with anti-freeze."

"Eat your soup, please," England said primly, making himself comfortable on the edge of the desk. "I haven't room in the hospital for you when you inevitably collapse from starvation."

France rolled his eyes.

"It disgusts me how you can possibly have gone from wild pirate to ruthless empire to doting nurse in less than four centuries," he scoffed. "Really, it is unnatural."

"Unnatural things have caused the change in me," England replied.

"You speak as though war is something new. We both know that that is not the case."

"This is a different _sort_ of war, though." England played with his fingernails for a moment, looking up at the dugout ceiling. "I received a letter from Matthew, by the way."

"Huh." France unscrewed the flask to examine the soup, which he was not optimistic about. "And how is he?'

"He's well. He has just finished his training with the RAF so I expect he'll see some action soon." England sighed. "I do hope he'll be alright. Some of those aeroplanes are little more than bloody boxes..."

"I am certain that he will come to no harm," France replied dryly. "Spare yourself the grey hairs, mon cher."

England shot him a reproachful glance.

"You are terribly unfeeling at times, Francis," he said archly. "It wouldn't hurt to show a _little_ something of human emotion now and again."

France gave an irritable groan, deciding to chance himself with the soup. It was hot, at least, but tasted of very little, a few sad, damp shreds of vegetable floating in it to give it some body.

"Human emotion is weak," he said coolly, swallowing with a repressed shudder. "Humans would do well to be as unfeeling as us; I would be inclined to say that war of this nature would be much less likely were humans not so hot-blooded."

"That's not what I meant," England said crossly. "I meant—"

"Oui, I know what you meant," France interrupted. "You meant the good things – or what you _consider_ to be the good things – about the relationships which humans form. You meant love and loyalty and family." He gave a disgusted snort and took another swig of the barely-there soup. "Because that is how you have always been, Arthur. No matter your cruelty, your callousness, your greed, you have always craved a family. You worked so hard to make one of us – you and I and Matthew and Alfred. You still speak of them now as though they are our sons."

"I—"

"Even now," France went on bitterly, "you are a nurse to these dying soldiers out of sheer pity. You write the letters home to their families with the promise that you did your best to save their heroic son."

"What would you have me do instead?" England snapped. "I refuse to take up a gun again in this senseless war. I am better where I am, doing _some_ good, at least – there are soldiers whose lives I have saved!"

"Ah, yes." France slammed down the flask, clenching his fists. "The soldiers. _That_ is why the war is senseless – the deaths of all those young men over a land quibble."

"Why _else_ would it be?" England asked frostily. "Those are _our_ people, after all."

France sighed and leaned back in his chair. His head ached and his bones twisted beneath his searing skin. England, who didn't understand, who stank like a hospital for dying brave souls, watched him expectantly.

"It is not your fault," France said gently, closing his eyes. "I cannot blame you for your ignorance. You cannot feel this war as Belgium and I do." He shook his head. "You cannot know the pain it causes she and I."

England arched his eyebrows.

"_Nobody_ has gotten off scot-free in that respect, I'll have you know," he said coolly. "Ludwig has bombed London with zeppelins, to begin with."

France shook his head once more.

"Non, you do not understand," he said again. "Those are wounds, Arthur – inflicted, deliberate, _designed_ to hurt you. What cripples Belgium and I is not any significant attack – it is the war itself. _Our_ wounds are the by-product of the fighting. We have fields which were once green, now vast seas of churned mud and spent bullets and dead men of all nationalities. All the world has gathered upon _our_ doorsteps for its world war."

England gave a hard-hearted shrug.

"They had to go somewhere, I suppose," he said shortly. "And not _all_ nationalities." He sighed and shook his head. "I do hope Alfred continues to have the good sense to keep out of this..."

France snorted, half-amused.

"I should not be surprised," he said icily, "that really the only human emotion you know how to mimic well is a mother's love. You have no idea how to love _me_, do you, Arthur?"

"Why should I want to? You will throw it back in my face, I do not doubt."

"Perhaps." France gave a another bitter smile. "But it is telling enough that you will not try. Besides... _Alfred_ threw it back in your face too, as I recall – and yet you continue to show no end of kindness towards _him_."

"It is... different." England exhaled. "I don't know how to explain it to you."

"I already understand. You think of Matthew and Alfred as akin to our children and so your love – or mimicry of it, at any rate – is unconditional." France grinned. "I suppose it _is_ too much to hope that someone like me would elicit the same emotion from you."

"What, a fuck-chum?" England shrugged. "I suppose not. That is the problem, though. Europe is incestuous and inbred and I hold love for no-one within it. I am part of this war only out of obligation."

"I believe that is the case for us all, cherie. Deals and promises made by our people are why we are all here."

"Well, we can hardly abandon our own men," England said coolly, "much as I am sure you would like to. Our love for our own people, at least, must be unconditional too – otherwise we have no right at all to call them ours."

France rested his chin on his knuckles, eying England irritably.

"Arthur, you are incredibly boring when you are being pious," he drawled spitefully. "And I grow tired of our word games. I think you know why I wanted you to come tonight."

"A kind word, as I recall."

"Well, you have yet to give me one – but that aside, my request was a prerequisite."

"Goodness me, I know _that_," England snorted.

"Trés bien." France shrugged. "So kindly tell me if we shall be moving to the bed or not."

"Not tonight, old sprout. I have to get back." England got off the desk again and patted France's shoulder. "Another time, perhaps. As a top tip, try not to rub me up the wrong way so much before you attempt to wrangle me into your louse-infested bed."

"Ah." France gave a little growl. "I shall try to remember that, you frigid little liar."

"I promised you only a kind word," England corrected, "and nothing more."

"And I say that you still have not given me even _that_."

"I brought you soup, you ungrateful frog."

"Indeed – and it tasted as though one of your precious patients had already partaken of it, if you understand my meaning."

"Perfectly clearly, I assure you."

"I mean it. It was terrible. More terrible than is usual for you."

"Well, bully to that." England leaned in and gave France a brief kiss on the forehead. "I wish you well for tomorrow, if nothing else."

France pushed him away, the smell of watery disinfectant on him almost making his retch with how close and clinical it was.

"I think you are a coward," he said bitterly. "Do you hear me, Arthur?"

"For bowing out of the frontlines?" England replied archly. "You know I haven't any fear of dying, Francis."

France nodded in agreement.

"Yes, of course," he said. "That is not what you are afraid of."

"Then what?" England folded his arms. "Do tell."

"You are afraid that you'll see what humans are really capable of—"

"I have seen that already—" England began wearily.

"You are afraid that you will see," France insisted, leaning forward, his entire bruised body screaming the words, "and you will stop loving them."

* * *

Jaded!France is an interesting change to write, I have to say! :3

Nurse!England (or Nursing Orderly!England, anyway!) is inspired by three sources: The character of Sybil Crawley in _Downton Abbey_, Hakuku's WWII AU artwork which had Arthur as a medic and Himaruya's own April Fools 2011, where England's costume was, of course, a (sexy) nurse's outfit.

Well, more to come (if I get time to write it... T.T I must not be defeated again!).

Hope you like it so far (especially to you, Haw-lin!)

xXx


	2. 2point2

Thank you to everyone who has commented so far! I'm very glad you like it! :)

Part II posted for Remembrance Sunday!

Green Fields – 2/2

France exhaled and his breath – shaking, fist-shaped – rose before his face on the freezing air. His body trembled, burning, breaking, but other than that, the involuntary but furious quivering, he did not move. He lay on his side, exactly as he had fallen, with any scrap of bare skin he could spare (his cheek, his elbow through a tear in his uniform, his knee through another) pressed flat to his own land, slick with mud and spattered with the impressions of charging bootprints.

It was a dry morning, bitterly cold, and the push was over. The Anglo-French manoeuvre had been successful, overpowering a German-Austro-Hungarian trench, but the cost in blood and bodies was plain to see in what had been No Man's Land only hours before (and green fields in France long before that). Hundreds of men lay dead, with many hundreds more soon to join them – young men from both sides, British, French, Belgian, German, Prussian, Austrian, Hungarian, all slaughtered to secure a small strip of land no longer even worth looking at.

In time, France knew, the green would grow back – and so would poppies, little bright blotches of scarlet, native and naïve, to mark the graves of nameless, thankless men.

France closed his eyes. The pain was unbearable and yet he bore no wound at all. None of the blood spilled here today was his own.

Some way off, in the middle of the new Allied land, England had brought the horse-drawn ambulance carriage to a halt. The little canvas-covered cart, cleanly white with its poppy-red cross on the side, had room for only three men, perhaps four at a push, and though it could make as many trips as necessary, the more it made, the less likely it was that those final passengers would be saved. The burden fell to the nurses now, and to England and whatever doctors they could get hold of, to choose only the wounded who were likely to live. Those with fatal injuries were left to die on the field.

France opened his eyes again as he heard England approach him.

"That's not funny," England said coldly. "Get up, you wanker." He prodded at France's shoulder with his boot. "Come _on_!"

"Is that concern I hear, mon cher?" France coughed out, pushing himself up.

"Hardly. It's just that I'm not wasting a stretcher on you." England took hold of France's elbow and helped him up, albeit rather roughly. "I can't even spare one for Belgium and the poor girl can hardly walk."

"Well, I am glad to see that your priorities are in order," France snapped. He felt rather like vomiting and shivered, wrapping his arms around himself.

"Don't fucking test me, Francis." England gave a sharp beckon. "Come along." He went marching off, his pristine uniform now spattered with mud and caked in dried blood the way it should be.

"Arthur, if I wanted to sit in the newly-acquired cesspool of a German trench, I would already be sitting in it," France said acidly, following him.

"You're not sitting in any bloody trench," England replied. "You are going to do something useful for me."

"You are a nurse," France griped. "Can you not see that I am unwell?"

"We'll soon have you right, old sprout." They came to the ambulance; England gave the restless horse a pat on the neck as he reached over its wooden harness, taking up the heavy Russian uniform overcoat which had been slung there. "Put that on and get yourself warmed up, you bleeding fool," England went on crisply, all but throwing the coat at France.

France grumbled but put it on, wrapping it around himself. It didn't warm him up by much but it helped. England's begrudged kindness helped just a little.

England lit himself a cigarette as he oversaw a nurse and two soldiers loading a third, a wounded Belgian lieutenant, into the ambulance to join two British privates and a French captain; he nodded and spoke in low tones to the nurse, who nodded in kind and hitched up her skirts to clamber into the ambulance with the luckiest four of the day.

"I think they'll be alright," England said conversationally, coming back to France. "Minor wounds – more stunned than anything, I think. Margaret will do all she can for them, at least." He took a final drag on his half-finished cigarette and then passed it to France, who was almost insulted but instead somehow grateful for the cast-off, cupping his hands around it as he watched England begin to pull some supplies from the ambulance so the nurses could take it back to the hospital.

"Got anything more warming on you?" France asked hoarsely, smoky breath sexy in situations far removed from this; observing England sling some old wool blankets over his shoulder.

England rolled his eyes, reached to his belt to unhook the steel flask and tossed it to France.

"Don't drink it all, you prick," he growled, threading several clattering tin lanterns up his arm. "It's mostly for cleaning wounds." He exhaled. "I'm likely going to need it."

France shrugged and swallowed a mouthful. It burned going down but had little taste; he shuddered and screwed the cap back on, sticking it in his own belt at the sight of England no longer having any hands free.

"What would you have me do, mon cher?" he drawled, sighing; even though he knew. The blankets and lanterns were the trinkets of his trade. This was England's ritual for the dying.

Sometimes he was much, much too kind for a country.

—

The lanterns flickered through the dying mist, dotted about like stars on the ragged, ruined field in France. In many ways, it was true that England remained inhuman, for this was not a human-like thing to do in most respects. Humans were resourceful, shrewd and survivalist, and in times of hardship did not waste things on the dying. They were, by and large, out for their themselves – and reminded France in many ways of rats, the way they swarmed and bred and carried disease and scattered to save their own skins at the slightest sign of danger.

(This was a generalisation, of course – but as a species, France had always believed that rats and humans bespoke of one another well nonetheless.)

But even _in_ the name of resourcefulness, it seemed that England was unable to harden his heart to a dying man. They lay in the freezing mud, often exactly as they had fallen, and begged whoever walked past them for help. Oftentimes, unless their voice was clear enough to denote that they were likely to live, they were ignored by the men they had called their comrades only metres back in the safety of their trench. There was no room for them – for there were far too many – but England had never been able to walk by them, to ignore their weak pleas for a final touch of kindness.

In the silence afterwards, he moved like a ghost between them all with a blanket to die under and a lamp to die by. He carried water too, if they were thirsty, and when he was done, the battlefield was lit with flickering pinpricks of cheap light, fluttering preciously like tiny fairies. It was a waste – of course it was a waste – but it was what England did and although he was reprimanded for it, he was never stopped.

France helped sometimes, following after England like the lady-in-waiting to a queen, carrying matches and a second water flask and some more blankets if they had any spare. England made him angry when he did this, though. He was _too_ kind. He never checked what side the dying soldier was from – and wasted water and light and heat on Germans and Austrians and Prussians. France bitterly mocked him for his sightless goodwill, calling him Saint Arthur and Britannia Angel, but England went on doing it and so France went on hating him for it (because he ached from the damage these dying men did to him and still England showed him no pity at all).

After all, it was all well and good for England to be kind to slow-and-obscenely dying soldiers – but they died on France's fields and it was _he_ who would evermore have to carry the burden of their bones.

At the last soldier, they sat down, three of them around the lamp – the young man shivering, barely conscious – as England watched the ambulance come trundling back over the muddy field. He lit himself another cigarette and folded his legs under himself before offering the packet to France, who huddled in the Russian coat as he took one.

"What is so special about this one?" he asked cattily, thumbing at the soldier sprawled to his right in the mud, torn blanket like a second skin over his expiring body. "Why do we grace him – and only him – with our company? It is clear that you do not think that he will live, for this treatment is one you reserve only for the dying."

He sucked spitefully on his cigarette, smouldering, as he waited for a reply. He was in such pain that even his fingertips trembled. Of course, he was not stupid – and nor was he blind. The dying soldier was very young, still in his teens, handsome and blonde with his hair parted to the side. His eyes weren't open, for he likely had less than an hour's life left in him, but France was fairly certain that they would be blue.

He looked like America, like Alfred, and there was no denying it.

"He is one of yours," England replied primly. "Show him a little gratitude."

France scoffed.

"You do not know that," he said bitterly. "I am not a fool, you know. You think that he looks like Alfred and that is the _only_ reason why you have chosen him over everyone else."

"He is one of yours," England insisted again, gently, patiently. "He said 'merci' when I put the blanket over him." He touched the boy's hair and they both listened to his rattling breath. "Or do you consider me so shallow?"

"Is it not shallow to assume that _I_ should care only because he is French?" France spat.

"He has laid down his life for you," England said reproachfully.

"He has laid down his life _upon_ me," France corrected angrily. "They are two different things."

"Ah, you belittle one of _mine_," England sighed. "'If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England'. Rupert Brooke – they sent _him_ out here to die as well."

France gave a snort.

"He suggests that there is a part of me forever stained by you," he said, allowing himself an ironic smile. "I would say that there is little chance of _that_ these days, hmm?"

"Your charms are lacking of late, I will admit," England said. "I was far more susceptible to your whims when plied on fine wine and silk sheets – but I suppose you are not to be blamed entirely. Lately I agree that I have become almost too practical to seduce."

"And I too weary and battlescarred to even try." France heaved a sigh and flicked away his cigarette. "Arthur, your chastity is nothing to be commended, you ought to know. I have found you easy to bed in the past and I shall not have you forget that."

"Perhaps," England replied easily, "but everything is different now. We are _all_ different." He, too, finished his cigarette, stubbing it out on the ground. "When this is over, the world will not forget it."

France lay back, mere inches from the fallen soldier as he settled. The tattered overcoat, torn and taken from the corpse of a Russian general, was thick beneath him and he couldn't feel the ground but for its hardness, frosted over as though to shield itself from further harm. The sky was clear, a dull grey-pink mid-morning stain, and was empty, too. He missed birds and had almost forgotten what they sounded like.

He had forgotten what the soldier's breathing sounded like, too – because the soldier had forgotten how to breathe. France turned his head to watch England take the young man's wrist to check for his pulse.

England didn't say anything like "He's gone" or "He's passed". All he did was reach for the lantern and put it out. Some still glowing in the field would be need putting out too, by now.

"The world will not forget," he said again, pulling the blanket over the boy's blonde head.

"Perhaps it would be better if it did."

"How so?" England asked. "Now that we have seen this, we can learn from it. It will not be like this again."

"_Non_ – do you not see?" France closed his eyes and exhaled. The pain of the war sang in his bones. "Now the world _knows_."

* * *

**[1918]**

Silent guns and eleven strikes ringing out through silent cities and it was over. Slipped borders moved back over the shores of the war and settled again, some in new places, most exactly where they had been to begin with.

There was only the dead now – and no longer the dying in once-green fields for nations fascinated by war to worship.

"Instead," France hissed, holding England close as he should have done in the trenches, "you have only _me_ to be kind to."

England no longer wore the uniform of a Nursing Orderly and had no reason whatsoever to be kind. Curiosity, then, had disarmed him – and he had removed France's uniform for the last time, disrobing him of four years of slow mutilation, with the same reverence of his sainthood (carrying lamps for sweet-sixteen-soldiers to die by).

"Oh," France sighed, "but you make me sick."

He held England's hips, bony hands cold on warm skin; England was thin, too, fatigued and hungry and with damage, with losses and a generation of his own utterly wiped out, but the fighting hadn't splintered his skin, hadn't left a mark at all on him. He was smug instead in France's lap, solid and warm around him, with more than half of his empire still intact, having come out of the war better than most nonetheless. Only America had more to crow over than him – and France had nothing but the means to break Germany's back.

"Do I?" England asked, running his thumb under France's eye. "How so?"

France arched his back and sighed. He held onto England nonetheless.

"You just wanted to assess the damage, didn't you?" He smirked. "Curiosity has driven you to my bed this time – the way it drove you to those soldiers in the field. You wanted to be the only ghost but were outnumbered then and you are outnumbered now."

"Kindness in nations is strange, I will agree," England said. "And false, too, I'm entirely certain. I probably _was_ only doing it for myself – just like the war."

"Oui – it was too much to hope that you were doing any of it for _me_."

They kissed and that was the end of the conversation.

(France had been painting. It was half-finished, a scene of green fields clustered with red blotches of poppies, fading to white where he had yet to cover the canvas.

England, one of the plain sheets wrapped around his shoulders so that it trailed after him like a cloak, took up the red paint and the brush and leaned over France's long, naked, battered body. He settled on his hips again and began to roughly dab the paint over the lines in his skin, the welts of trenches and deep blowouts of bombs, pressing them together thickly so that there was no distinction between where one ended and the next began, flowering over scars to hide them.

"What is the verdict, Nurse Kirkland?" France teased blackly, lying still and letting him do it.

"You will recover," England said, intent on his painting. "And then we will rip you apart all over again, my darling.")

* * *

And that's that. Haw-lin, I hope you liked it! Thank you so much for the lovely artwork (part of which is currently my icon).

I can't believe it's been almost one hundred years since the First World War broke out... o.O


End file.
